


holding hands while the walls come tumbling down

by aviator8



Series: and i'll put down my roots when i'm dead [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dream Smp, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, Found Family, Ghost!Wilbur, Ghostbur, Hurt/Comfort, King!George, Platonic Cuddling, VERY ooc lmao, dreamnotfound, knight!dream, no beta we die like the entire dream smp, platonic soulmates type beat, sleepybois inc - Freeform, the final war, tommy and tubbo have the best friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27614405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aviator8/pseuds/aviator8
Summary: It’s all gone.Everything he’s worked for, shed his blood and tears for, sacrificed his family and friends for. It’s gone. And all he has to show for it is his scars, and this button in the dark.It would be so easy.ori am in Pain over the great smp war and wanted to write about the wil-phil scene and the button so this rambling mess was written in an hourenjoy lol!!
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit & Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson
Series: and i'll put down my roots when i'm dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032339
Comments: 6
Kudos: 138





	holding hands while the walls come tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "everybody wants to rule the world" by lorde
> 
> tw// major character death, mentions of scars
> 
> also mentions of dnf
> 
> if anyone mentioned in this expresses discomfort with works like this, this will be deleted immediately.
> 
> enjoy your read :D

A man stands alone in the dark.

He’s been here before.

It’s nothing new.

Stone walls, wooden chair. And the writing scrawled on the wall, jagged penmanship ominous and stark.

_I heard there was a special place…_

It’s all gone.

Tommy and Tubbo’s laughs echoing against the blackstone walls, walls long since torn down. Niki beaming as she holds a plate of freshly baked cookies. Fundy’s amber eyes glowing in the light of a campfire. Even Eret, grinning from the shadows. 

If there’s one thing Wilbur knows, it’s that he doesn’t get a second chance. There’s no do-over. No take-backs. It’s just him and his scars, and this button in the dark.

_If I can’t have it, then no one, and I mean_ no one _, can._

It would be so _easy_.

He flexes his fingers. 

It would be so simple. 

One little press. 

A spark. 

And he could go home. 

It would be over and he could go home. 

He reaches out, calloused fingers caressing the button on the wall. 

A voice in the dark.

“Wilbur?”

“ _Dad?_ ”

Phil.

The man staring back at him is so familiar. So familiar, yet he could be a stranger. “Wil.” His voice is soft and it’s taking all Wilbur has not to run into his arms. He wants Phil to tell him it’ll be alright, everything’s gonna be okay, the way he did when Wilbur was ten and the worst thing to happen to him was a scraped knee. 

Sounds of fighting seep through the stone. Yells, the clash of steel. It all blends together. 

He’s used to it, by now. 

A sob scrapes the back of his throat. “Dad, they’re fighting.”

“I know, son.” Phil takes a step forward, but Wilbur cowers back, digging his nails into the rough stone wall. 

Phil holds a hand out, palm up, like he’s trying to soothe a rabid animal. “Wilbur, you’ve fought so hard to get this land back. I’m so proud of you.”

Wilbur turns away, pressing his fevered forehead to cool stone. 

Once, that would have been all he wanted to hear. _I’m proud of you, son._ But Wilbur and the little boy who only wanted his adoptive father’s love are countless wars and heartbreaks apart.

Distantly, he notices that his fingertips are bleeding. From digging into the wall. He thinks. Maybe his hands have just always been covered in blood.

It’s what he deserves, isn’t it?

A permanent reminder of the pain he’s dealt to everyone.

How’s he supposed to look at his dad and tell him he led his brothers into a war they could never have won?

Wilbur comes back to himself, piece by piece.

Fingernails on stone. A warm hand on his shoulder. Eyes trained on the floor.

And the button.

That aether-damned button.

He rallies himself, pulls every last aching shard together for this final, bleak battlefield. And when he turns to Philza again, nonchalantly shaking the man’s hand off of his shoulder, it’s not a broken boy looking at his father, but the last true president of a dead and dying nation. His chapped lips slowly form a grin. “Phil, there was a saying by a traitor once part of L’Manberg.”

The world seems to inhale.

“ _It was never meant to be._ ”

The world exhales.

And Wilbur presses the button.

. . .

When he comes to, the first thing he notices is the ringing in his ears.

The second is the massive hole that’s now in the side of the room, providing a glimpse of what used to be Manberg.

The third is Phil sitting across from him, looking worn out.

“Dad?”

“Son.”

Wilbur sobs.

He feels so empty. The place inside of him that used to be a roiling black pit is hollow now. He can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.

“I did it, Dad.” Tears trace paths down his grimy cheeks, but he doesn’t bother to wipe them away.

“Aye, that you did.” Phil tugs his trademark bucket hat off of his head, crumpling it in his hands. It’s only then that Wil notices that something’s off with Phil’s wings. Phil notices him looking, and says, “Clipped ‘em. Dream’s rules. No flight in his territory.”

Wil knows he should be angry at that. Knows that not a year ago, he’d be howling for Dream’s blood. All he feels now is tired.

He looks out at the havoc he’s wreaked. He and Phil share a moment of silence.

He can see people running around, still fighting. Sunlight bounces off of golden hair. That must be Tommy, then, and the one beside him Tubbo. Never apart, even now. The ominous shadow of the last of Techno’s withers skitters over the decimated ground. There’s Niki, a snarl on her sweet face as she pulls a bow taut. Aiming to kill. Dream and his deadly grace. Techno slipping away into the shadows, the look on his face not one of a man who’s won.

Wilbur exhales, tipping his head back against the wall. He steels his resolve. It doesn’t take much. The end was coming, no matter by whose hand it came. He’d like to do it on his own terms.

He doesn’t look at his dad as he speaks. “L’Manberg, my unfinished symphony. Forever unfinished. If I can’t have it, no one can.” The words don’t ring as true as they used to, falling flat in the debris-heavy air of the secret room. He pushed the diamond sword into Phil’s lap. “Kill me, Phil. Dad. Please. I-I’m so tired. Dad. _Please._ Kill me, end me, make it stop--” His words begin to blend together, whatever clarity he’d scraped together in the aftermath of the explosion slipping away again.

He looks at Phil now, and his eyes seem to glow with manic energy.

And Phil--Phil’s scared.

His son. He’d do anything to ease his pain.

Phil’s lived a long enough life to know when someone’s at the end of theirs.

And Wilbur is.

A part of his mind can’t accept that, refuses to accept that, _he’s my son_ , but if it doesn’t end here, it will end worse later.

Tommy and Technoblade will never look at him the same.

Everyone will call him Philza Son-Killer, will curse him.

And yet. Is that not preferable to the alternative?

Because when it comes down to it, Phil will do anything for his sons. So he takes the diamond sword into his hand. Pulls Wil to his feet. Musses his hair one last time. Wil lets him. Meets his father’s eyes and smiles, one last time.

And Phil slides the sword into his son’s chest.

. . .

Healing doesn’t come overnight.

The SMP isn’t rebuilt in a day.

Tommy and Tubbo move in together. They can’t sleep without being in the same room, eventually relenting to the nightmares and squashing into a tiny bed together. They build a home together above the pit where their country used to be. President Tubbo makes a speech about remembering their past and working towards their future. Afterwards, he and Tommy race each other to the riverside, splashing and yelling in the frigid water.

Their little kingdom on stilts is occupied fairly quickly. Karl, Sapnap, and Quackity are the first to move in. They build a home together. They laugh loudly, but so joyously that no one can fault them for it. It’s a nice change from war cries, anyways.

Dream makes George king, officially. They take up residence in the big stone castle. “King” is a loose term with them, clearly. Their days are spent mostly picking wildflowers and making obscenely sappy faces at each other. After all they’ve been through, no one can really fault them.

Philza’s wings grow back. He and Techno make a home in the woods not too far away from the center of the SMP. Tommy visits sometimes, brings Tubbo along sometimes, and it’s like their family is whole again. It’s only in the gaps between conversations that would usually be filled with the soft strumming of a guitar that their smiles fade. 

Tommy doesn’t visit Wilbur’s grave for months. Something in him can’t piece together that Wilbur isn’t coming back this time. Seeing a gravestone, the word _WILBUR_ lovingly carved into it, will make it too real. 

One sunny day, he finally does. And it’s… not so bad. He misses Wilbur. It’s one more hole in Tommy’s heart that will never be filled. But when he sits in front of the diorite headstone, criss-cross in the spring-green grass, and talks to his brother, it’s almost like he can hear Wilbur answer.

And one day, he actually does.

Tommy glances up in the middle of a rant about piglin trades and sees a boy in a yellow sweater, brown curls tucked under a beanie, perched on top of his own headstone. The sunshine filters through his body a bit, and he’s pale and staring at Tommy like he's a stranger, but it’s Wilbur. And just like that, everything’s right with the world.

Sure, war’s looming on the horizon. Dream has Tommy and Tubbo’s discs still. There are wounds that haven’t healed, that may never heal.

But really, when isn’t war looming on the horizon?

Right now, everything’s golden and peaceful.

Tommy has his brothers.

Dream has his George.

Phil has his sons.

And for now, that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> so that was... uh... that.  
> the most motivation i've had to write in ages!!  
> there will be more along these lines coming soon (i've been planning like a NOVEL based on the dream smp so we'll see if that ever gets done)  
> feedback would be pog!!  
> come yell with me about mcyts on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/HONKBLADE)


End file.
